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Whatever Floats Your Boat 2
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9 thoughts on “Whatever Floats Your Boat 2”
Since much of your comment deals with lack of traditional planning, what then would you suggest to teachers that are faced with the dilemma of providing a traditional lesson plan to administration? Luckily, I don’t have to show much but I am curious what yours might look like, if you were to sit down and type one up just “for show”.
Jennifer I have to submit lesson plans and a ton of other stuff (ours is the most data driven high school in Denver by far). I will send you my lesson plans Monday around noon when I send them to my AP. By the way, they are not just for show. My weekly schedule is accurately described, standards are addressed, etc. I can also send you the daily Content and Language Objectives that must be posted near my door for each class I teach (which, by the way, the kids have to be able to articulate during class if asked to do so by an administrator). The fact that right brain me can even do this, of course, is a tribute to Diana Noonan’s leadership of the district. She continually makes us all see how what we are doing with CI is actually A LOT MORE ALIGNED with standards and expectations than those who comprise the larger part of the elephant mentioned here in a comment earlier today. That’s what’s crazy about all this. WE are the ones who are aligning with standards. People who use books and worksheets are not aligning with a damn thing.
We don’t have to hand in lesson plans but we will be having to do everything else else you said. We as a department have to be able to prove with data that what we are doing works. Unfortunately, our kids don’t do well on the disctict common assessment which is nothing more than a multiple choice test generated using a test generator from the text book used in the district. If I take a week off from TCI and teach my kids how to take the test they do fine. I could let them practice with the verb conjugators, electronic flashcards, etcetera, thus helping them to memorize the vocabulary and learn how to fill in the blanks. What a waste of time. Okay, I’ll stop ranting, but with 4 meetings a week after school and one before school this week, I am beat and next week looks worse with the district pressuring us to choose a text book so we will all have a common curriculum. What a joke! Everyone who thinks we are too easy in TCI wants to know how many chapters the publishers expect them to get through in a term on the 4 x 4 block, what the projects look like in chapter five, how much technology…rats, I didn’t stop ranting!
I most humbly beg that you include me in your offer to Jen, if you would be so kind.
Could I ask for a copy too? We aren’t there at all on having to have lesson plans turned in (not for about 20 years, in my case), but I’m sure that could change in an instant.
Can you please send these documents to me as well? The day will come when I will be needing to start submitting weekly plans and other documentation as well. I’ve been fearing that day because I’ve felt that when that day come I may have to revert back to “the old ways” because I wouldn’t know what to put down. I guess I was wrong, thanks to Ben once again!
This is whyI say we are at the business end of the elephant. And guess who’s feeding the elephant? I’ll give you a hint:
…everyone … wants to know how many chapters the publishers expect them to get through in a term on the 4 x 4 block….
Those book teachers who are tied to the corporations are still believing that they are doing the right thing. Bless their hearts! I learned that expression in Charleston, SC. It is a way of cramming a rant into three words so that they have no idea of the rage actually there in the speaker. What you describe is outrageous and all too common. I hope Kevin makes a note of what you said in his information gathering. It is outrageous! That’s all we can say at this point. Clarice we are doing a number of things in DPS that can be of help so Jennifer I will just publish here my lesson plans, daily objectives, common assessment process (we have to give them every six weeks but the administration may have recently recanted on that requirement after a revolt from the faculty about data gathering overtaking everything). I will try to gather and publish here other such things that have their beginnings in Diana’s reform work for WL for DPS. I can’t guarantee this too soon because some of it we on our team haven’t started, but I will share what I can get when I can. Clarice nice holding back there. You sound like you work with a bunch of Hamadryas baboons. Those are the ones who fling their excrement at people from zoo cages. I know from personal experience at the St. Louis Zoo. They criticize too strongly, methinks. I say we learn to aim back and return the fire! It couldn’t be any worse than where we are now perched as slivers of wood at the back of the pachyderms of language instruction. Dang. I was thinking of recanting and going to ACTFL just to look for a few diamonds in the crowd but after reading this, Clarice, I can see that if those are the folks coming to Denver in a few weeks, then I think I’ll head down to South America for those four days! I might get arrested for banging heads together!
Yes! Bless their hearts and there but for the grace of having found my way to language acquisition I used to be. South America or language conference that is not 100% having to do with CI…hmmm. Doesn’t seem like much of a difficult choice to me.
“Clarice nice holding back there. You sound like you work with a bunch of Hamadryas baboons. Those are the ones who fling their excrement at people from zoo cages. I know from personal experience at the St. Louis Zoo. They criticize too strongly” You have NO IDEA how much I needed a good laugh! Thank you! (I think that may be one of your best “images” so far, Ben! 🙂
Ben, anything you’d be willing to share with me (us) is appreciated. Such a help! I thank you in advance.